Phl, Australia firms team up to develop Pinoy technoprenuers

MANILA, Philippines -- Incubator-accelerator firms from the Philippines and Australia have entered into a partnership to fund and mentor Filipino technopreneurs.

Local incubator Kickstart Ventures Inc., a wholly-owned company by Globe Telecom, teamed up with Australian counterpart Pollenizer to bring the latter’s distinctive approach to company formation into the Philippines market.

The partnership dubbed Pollenizer@Kickstart hopes to increase the chances of success of local technopreneurs by combining top talent, great ideas, and startup best practices.

The concept is to provide highly-skilled engineers, business people, and product managers with a unique environment for entrepreneurial experimentation.

Pollenizer@Kickstart encourages interested individuals to apply to join a team that Kickstart and Pollenizer are co-founding to address a well-researched problem, with the Pollenizer@Kickstart  program providing a built-in funding runway, and a structured incubation process.  

Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart, said team members could be corporate employees looking for more autonomy and freedom to experiment, entrepreneurs looking to plug into a support system and pre-defined project, or people who have moved between both environments.

Each team member is considered a co-founder and receives an equity stake in the business that they form as well as a salary to meet month expenses.

Team members are expected to own the vision and execution for the business, with intense support, mentorship and guidance from Kickstart and Pollenizer. One of them will also be chosen as the Chief Executive Officer of the new business.

The businesses will be given funding to sustain operations for at least one year.

Subsequent funding rounds, however, will be driven by the team, with ample support from Kicsktart and Pollenizer including access to the two companies’  investor networks.

Companies to be built by Pollenizer@Kickstart teams will target the Philippines as a launch market while maintaining a global outlook.

At present, Pollenizer@Kickstart is seeking team members with three main profiles, such as Engineers who are knowledgeable on Ruby/Rails, PHP/Cake or other languages and platforms; Product managers who have clear understanding of the customers and can do wireframes, pitching, and prototyping; and Commercial and business development managers who are experienced in product pricing, sales and distribution, channel and account management, and pitching proposals.

Navarette said all team members are required to be gutsy entrepreneurs  to pursue their global business  dreams with available resources.  

"We have assessed the needs of the Philippine market and we are looking for ideas that would address the gaps and exploit the opportunities in the problem spaces such as real estate listings, e-commerce, remittance, labor cost arbitrage, OFW placement, education, and healthcare," Navarrete said.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit their applications on or before June 30, 2013.